Loss Leads to Indecision

Happy Tuesday! How was your weekend? Mine was kind of good. My sweet baboo and I took advantage of the long weekend to get out of town for a couple of days. No phones, no computers, no grandchildren, no schedules. It was great.

Well, I did break my cell phone and lose my meter.

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I discovered the cell phone mishap as we were trying to figure out a place to meet in the downtown mall. Hubby was going to check out of the hotel and drive over to the garage where we usually park when we are in downtown Indianapolis and I was going to drive my scooter to the mall.

A great fan of “Plan A,” “Plan B,” and a “contingency plan,” he made sure his cell phone was on and asked me to check mine. I reached into the outside pocket of my purse where I keep it and pulled out half of my cell phone. When I say I broke my cell phone, I mean I broke it. Must have happened the day before when my purse fell out of the basket on my scooter onto the sidewalk and I then ran over it.

No biggie: There was a kiosk in the mall and I had a new cell phone within the hour.

The meter was a bit more problematic. I discovered it was missing at the restaurant we went to for dinner when I failed to find it in my purse. I’d used the meter at lunch, but we’d been to a few places since then and, at one point, I’d dropped my purse (see the part above about the broken cell phone). Could it have fallen out of my purse then and we missed seeing it?

To top it off, I wasn’t wearing my continuous glucose monitor (CGM) because the sensor had crapped out early and, quite frankly, I was just plain ol’ pissed at it because the adhesive hadn’t lasted very well.

So. No meter. No CGM. And then my dinner came, and I didn’t like it, so I didn’t eat it all.

And on it went, until I finally told him I was FINE and to just LEAVE ME ALONE!

(I grabbed a bag of chips on the way back to the hotel. It seemed the wise thing to do.)

As somebody who is used to either checking my glucose whenever I want or pulling out a receiver that displays a steady stream of information, I was a bit disconcerted to be totally clueless. How did people go all of those years with no information?

Because I have meters at home, I didn’t want to buy a new one, so I gave myself less insulin than I thought I needed whenever I ate something. When I checked after I got home, I was at 222 mg/dl—not too bad, considering I ate a hamburger and fries for lunch.

Now I’m debating with myself. My CGM is a Dexcom, which calibrates with a LifeScan Ultra. That’s the meter I lost. There is software available now which will allow me to use a meter of my choice to calibrate the Dexcom, but I don’t have the software yet.

I also dropped my Dexcom receiver, which is not waterproof, under some running water the day the sensor crapped out. Did the sensor shut down because the adhesive was coming loose or because the receiver got wet? I don’t know. Considering that I have problems with the adhesive sticking and that I may have to buy a new receiver, do I even want to stay with Dexcom, or do I want to move to another brand of CGM?

So many questions. So few answers. In the meantime, my CGM gathers dust and I am enjoying trying out some new meters. I’ll let you know about them in the next week or so.

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Florian

Gee whiz Jan, broke your cell phone, lost your meter, not wearing your CGM, and dropped your CGM Receiver under running water. You should be band from the People with Diabetes Union and made to live a NORMAL life without diabetes for the rest of your life. I can tell you that the days before meters wasn’t that bad because we didn’t know any better. I was told to take one shot of NPH every day and test my urine for sugar.It was tough to pee into that little test tube. I also had a diet to follow, NO SUGAR or anything with SUGAR. Foods didn’t have labels like today listing fats, carbs,(sugar)and protein. There may have been just a list of ingredients but that was it. I have seen a lot of changes in the 41 years that I have been a practicing Type 1. It’s getting easier to manage diabetes and control blood sugar with all the new meds and medical devices but I am looking forward to THE CURE and I will try to stay healthy and fit using all the tools available until it happens.

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